After nine months of a high-risk pregnancy, Jessica Disborough arrived at Rush on a snowy Super Bowl Sunday in 2015 to deliver her son, Pierce. However, his heart rate dropped drastically during labor, resulting in an unexpected cesarean section. The delivery team discovered he had been tangled in the umbilical cord, cutting off oxygen to his system and damaging his frontal lobe.
“We quickly received the grave news that Pierce suffered two seizures at birth, and that he may have cerebral palsy and never be able to walk,” says Disborough. “One reason we had chosen Rush was for the world-class technology, having access to the top-of-the-line tools — and that is definitely what helped Pierce defy the odds that day and saved his life.”
Families like the Disboroughs receive this kind of comprehensive, compassionate and family-centered care each day through the Rush University Children’s Hospital.
Support Rush University Children’s Hospital with a gift today.
How your support will help children and families
The Rush University Children’s Hospital is building a brighter future for our kids. Your support will allow the hospital’s expert clinicians and visionary researchers to help more children in need through promising research, comforting facilities and comprehensive, compassionate family-centered care.
Imagine what you could make possible. Here are just a few examples of how your gift could help:
- Funding the first FDA-approved biodegradable stents for pediatric pulmonary arteries, improving the lives of kids with complex congenital heart disease
- Providing insulin pumps for children with type 1 diabetes to decrease painful daily injections and reduce severe low blood glucose episodes
- Offering parenting support for hundreds of West Side families in need through a home visitors program
- Enabling nonverbal children to communicate — for the first time — through augmented communication software
- Allowing researchers to study why high-risk mothers produce less breast milk than other nursing mothers
- Sending children with chronic or life-threatening illnesses to a week-long camp, where they’ll grow and learn from other children coping with similar disorders in a safe, supportive and fun environment
- Funding vital infant simulation training and technology, enhancing the skills of the neonatal intensive care unit staff who treat high-risk infants
Your support of these opportunities — and so many others — helps us achieve our mission of excellent family-centered care. Give today and join us in this mission.
How you can give to the Rush University Children’s Hospital
To make a gift or learn more about supporting the children’s hospital, please contact Brigid Mullen, director of development, at (312) 942-4460 and at brigid_t_mullen@rush.edu.